


The Last Thing...

by Grey_wonderer



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grey_wonderer/pseuds/Grey_wonderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rick finds Sophia, there isn't time to lead her to safety.  First he has to deal with the Walkers.  He has no choice but to leave Sophia on her own and hope that he's doing the right thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Thing...

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story contains spoilers for the television series, WALKING DEAD, up through the middle of season two.
> 
> These are not my characters and I am making no money at all on this. The characters are the creations of Robert Kirkman who wrote the graphic novels and this fiction is based on the television version of those novels. I own nothing.
> 
> GW
> 
>  
> 
> *****

Stay here.  That’s what Rick had said.  That, or something like it.  Her thoughts were slightly muddled now and so ‘Stay here’  might have been ‘Don’t move’ or ‘Keep still’ but really, it was all the same.  Grown-ups were always telling you where to be or what to do or how to do it.  That was fine most of the time.  It kept you from having to decide for yourself what to do.  Then, if it went horribly wrong, like it had this time, it wasn’t your fault.  You were just doing what you had been told to do.  No one could blame you for that, could they?

She looked down at her feet.  The wreckage lying before her had once been a woman but now it was just all twisted and mangled, feet turned inward at an angle that wasn’t possible if your bones were still in one piece, one arm missing and the other bent awkwardly beneath the body.  She was all shades of grey and black as if she were an old photo come to life.

Sophia held the long, thin tree branch in both hands and waited.  The woman wasn’t going to get back up.  She was certain of it, but she couldn’t stop looking at her.

This had, possibly been someone’s mother once or someone’s wife.  Now, she was just a dead Walker.  Blessedly dead, but not dead soon enough.  Sophia guessed that the Walker was probably better off now than she was.  She looked at the bright red drops of blood on her shirt but she dared not look too closely at the bite on her arm.

They would come back for her in a while and they would find her gone.  Rick had said to ‘Stay put’ but that hadn’t been possible.  She’d been hiding and waiting, wishing that Rick had just taken her by the arm and led her to safety.  Maybe they could have outrun the danger if he hadn’t decided to leave her.  He’d been quick to find her but in the end, it didn’t matter.  He’d left her and hurried off.  Something else had found her then.

She’d been frightened.  She’d tried to sit still but she had seen the woman coming for her, seen the Walker moving toward her hiding place.  She had panicked.  Before she’d had time to blink hardly, she was on her feet and running off along the stream.  She hadn’t stopped until she was certain that she had outrun the thing.

But she’d been wrong.  While she was catching her breath, it had shambled up behind her.  She’d felt that sensation you sometimes get when you think someone is watching you.  She hoped it was Rick or Carl or her mama, but it wasn’t.  She turned just in time.  It was reaching for her with its cold, bluish hands, its mouth hanging askew as if the jaw were broken revealing discolored teeth, and its eyes were dead and unfocused.  There were patches of skin missing from its face and arms, and it lurched forward awkwardly, but it was coming for her.

Sophia remembered backing away.  She remembered stumbling and then it was on her.  It was strong for something that looked so decayed.  She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.  The Walker was gripping her wrist and pulling her toward it.  She reached behind her with her free hand and found the tree branch, found it at just the very instant that the Walker’s teeth found her arm.

Pain coursed through her and she felt herself go ridged and then she felt strangely numb.  She gripped the tree branch tightly and drove it into the eye of the Walker.    She pushed hard, hoping to drive the branch completely out the back of the cursed thing’s skull.  She hadn’t managed that but she’d killed it just the same.  They were easy to kill if you had the time because you didn’t have to work too hard to get something forced into their brains.  They were all mushy and soft from the rot.  Sophia knew that she wasn’t very strong, but she was strong enough to kill the Walker.

The Walker had gone all still.  Sophia was on her feet again, holding the branch and waiting.  What was she waiting for?  Rick?  More Walkers?  Carl?  Her Mama?  Thinking of her mom made her stomach do a nasty turn and tears formed in the corners of her eyes.  Looking for some small comfort, she scanned the ground and found her doll lying face down in the dirt.

Sophia bent and scooped it up and held it tightly.  She let the branch fall from her hands and just like that she knew.  She wasn’t ever going to see her Mama again.  She couldn’t now.

She remembered what had happened to some of the others.  If she went back, she might be able to hide the bite for a while, but they’d find it.  And when they found it, one of them would have to kill her.  Probably Shane or Daryl.  They were both good at killing.  

Carl said that Shane was only doing it to protect them and that he was a good man to have around now with all they had to face, but there was something about Shane that Sophia didn’t like.  Something that reminded her of the nasty, squishy ooze that came out of the Walkers when someone smashed their heads in.  There was a part of Shane that was already dead.  He was a bit like the Walkers that way.  Carl was wrong about Shane.  He was wrong to trust him.  Sophia knew that but, she wouldn’t get a chance to warn Carl.  She just hoped he would realize it on his own before it was too late.

Sophia held the doll tightly and began to walk away from the open area and into the trees.  She would hide so they didn’t find her.  She would go far away until they couldn’t accidentally stumble upon her.  She didn’t like all of them, didn’t trust some of them, but most of them were good people.  She didn’t want to hurt them, couldn’t stand the thought of hurting her Mama, but she wouldn’t be able to stop herself once it took her.

She was only a child, but she was a child that had seen too much.  She knew things that children shouldn't know.  She was mentally old, which was probably good since she wasn't going to get the chance to be old in years.  The Walker had seen to that.  Still, she felt strangely relieved.  If more Walkers found her, they wouldn’t harm her.  She was one of them, or she would be before long.  If some of her friends found her, and she really hoped they didn’t, she knew they would be able to see what she was.  Rick would know.  Or Daryl.  A thing like that would be so hard on her Mama!

She felt hot like you do when you have a fever.  She was burning up inside but she kept walking.  She moved through the trees and away from her Mama.  It might have been hours since she’d been bitten or days.  She didn’t know.  She was losing track of time.  Everything was foggy.  Her feet felt like lead and her doll, the one she had held for comfort earlier, was nearly forgotten, dangling from her right hand.  She moved as if she were wading through deep water.

Later, when she lost her grip on the doll and it fell, she didn’t notice.  By then she wasn’t noticing much at all.  She kept moving but much slower than before.  Once, she thought she heard someone calling her name but she didn’t answer.  They were far away.  She kept going.  She didn’t belong with them anymore.

Just before everything went away, she thought she saw Rick but she wasn’t certain.  If it had been Rick, he didn’t see her.  Soon after that, there was nothing at all, only walking and hunger.  Sophia was gone, only the physical portion of her remained, moving disjointedly along, going nowhere in particular.

 

Then Otis found her.

He’d been supposed to kill a deer and instead he’d shot a child.  He’d never harmed a child in his entire life.  Now, when life was so precious, he’d shot a child, a healthy child, but about two hours before that, he’d found that poor little girl.  The child had been attacked or bitten and she was like the others in the barn. She had that dead gaze and her skin was going grey, but there was still enough of the child she had once been to make it painful for him.  He didn't think that she'd been like that for very long.  Her features were still too normal.  She wasn't right.  He could tell that instantly, but still, he could see the child she had once been, fading just below the surface.

Otis didn’t know her.  He’d never seen her before but she probably belonged to someone in town.  She was probably one of their neighbors before all of this happened, whatever *this* was.  Otis didn’t have the heart to leave her, and so he had done the only thing that he could; he’d captured her and put her in the barn with the others.    He would tell Hershel about it later. 

 

Then, feeling a bit sick, he’d tried to escape his thoughts of that poor child in the barn shambling around with the others, by going out again to hunt.  When he was hunting, he was doing something to help the family.  Hunting kept his mind away from what was happening.  At least it did until he accidentally shot the boy.

That was when he forgot all about the little girl in the barn.  He would have told someone, but there wasn’t time.  Now, as he went out to the truck with this fellow, Shane, so they could go for supplies in the hopes of saving the boy, now, it was too late.  He’d forgotten her completely.  All that mattered was undoing the wrong he’d done to the boy.  He couldn’t save that little girl.  He wasn't responsible for what had happened to her, but he had to try and help save the boy.  The boy was his doing.  If *that* child died it would be on his head.

 

This fella, Shane seemed like a decent enough guy.  He looked resourceful too.  What they were trying was nearly impossible, but Otis felt like Shane would be a good guy to have around in a tight spot.  He'd be the sort to get home alive.  It was good to be going out with someone like that.  It increased their chances of success, and it also increased the boy's chances.

 

Later, when Shane shot him in the leg, when those things surrounded him, when he knew he was going to die or worse, that was when Otis remembered the little girl he'd put into the barn.  It was too late, but that was when he remembered her.  She was the last thing on his mind.  The last thing...

GW  12-11-2011


End file.
